5 Lessons I Learned From Ignoring Bitcoin
What year did you get to know Bitcoin? Did you have the courage to invest in this digital asset right when you heard the name Bitcoin? Perhaps one of the regrets of many of us is that although we heard the name of Bitcoin many times, we missed the opportunity to buy digital gold at a cheap price!
In this note, we are going to hear the story of one person who got to know Bitcoin very early and thought of investing in it very late.
Konstantin Rabin, one of the experienced experts in economics and business and the CEO and founder of the fintech company “Finance Makers”, tells the story of his introduction to Bitcoin with a fluent pen. something Interesting and readable in “Bitcoin Magazine” and shares the tips he learned from this experience with his readers. You can read the rest of the text by Konstantin Rabin.
I, Konstantin Rabin, was lucky enough to be introduced to Bitcoin more than a decade ago when few people knew it; But unfortunately, I was so stupid that I didn’t seize this opportunity and missed the opportunity to invest early!
Next, I will tell you how I thought about investing in Bitcoin three times before I became a HODLer; But I gave up. My story has important lessons and can help people who are still skeptical of Bitcoin.
Familiarity with Bitcoin
I started my first full-time job in 2011 in one of the online brokerages; Therefore, it was not strange that some of my colleagues are greedy and traders and enthusiastically follow everything related to investment, technology and progress in the financial world. It didn’t take long before I met a friend named Edgar at my workplace. Edgar’s interests and tastes were similar to mine. For example, we both loved playing and of course we were addicted to smoking.
We worked in different parts of the company and rarely interacted through work; But we never missed an opportunity to walk and smoke together. Along with these friendly conversations, which were accompanied by breathing fresh air and of course nicotine smoke, we talked about life and the world and everything else.
One day in 2012, when I wanted to invite Edgar to one of these two-person smoking sessions, his Skype status caught my attention. He wrote something like this: 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2. This unintelligible phrase was more like a cat walking on Edgar’s keyboard!
As we were talking, I asked him, “Was that phrase the cat’s work, or was your account hacked?” He denied both possibilities and then went into a long and complicated explanation about Bitcoin and the blockchain, saying that this was his Bitcoin account address. Edgar explained everything to me about Bitcoin. He spoke so passionately about Bitcoin that I was hooked from the start.
Read more: Best Books to Start Learning Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
I didn’t invest when Bitcoin was $10!
Since my work involved investing in the financial markets, I was very familiar with online scams and dubious and fake products like electronic gold. At least at first glance, they all looked alike. However, the more Edgar explained to me about Bitcoin, the more convinced I was that it was more than just a scam and that I could at least look at it as a bet.
At that time, I had a big problem. 2012 was the worst year of my life financially. Although by then only about 3.7 million Bitcoin addresses [درمقایسهبا ۱میلیارد آدرس کنونی] There was, I was sure I didn’t have any extra money to risk. I had to take the risk of investing in an unproven technology that promised to “revolutionize” the financial system.
At that time, I was so poor that at the end of the month when I went grocery shopping, I had to choose between buying groceries or a pack of cigarettes. So, at a time when eating meat was considered a luxury for me, it could not make sense to risk buying digital tokens in the hope of their future growth. I should also add that the price of Bitcoin at that time was less than 10 dollars!
Hesitation for capitalTheBet on Bitcoin
From 2012 to 2015, I worked with John Wedel and was able to become an experienced employee. In 2015, I was working in one of the leading fintech startups in Europe and most of my colleagues were experts and professionals in the field of software development.
Our job was to retrieve and evaluate the financial and banking information of people without obtaining permission from the banks. We even installed a pirate flag in our office! That being said, it was only natural that many of my colleagues were ardent fans of Bitcoin and all things related to it.
Since I had made significant progress in my career, I was getting paid much more, and in addition to food and cigarettes, I could save some money for the day just in case. Moreover, I knew that keeping money in the bank was not a good solution for saving and since I had no plans to spend my extra money, I thought of investing.
Read more: 12 Myths About Bitcoin You Shouldn’t Believe
My colleagues would talk about Bitcoin every now and then; But I was still hesitant to invest in this digital asset. At the time, Bitcoin was worth about $250 and had just fallen from its all-time high of $1,000.
I wanted to invest in a stable asset!
Overconfident in my financial acumen, I evaluated Bitcoin. Ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as Bitcoin’s fans are just a handful of tech geeks, the digital currency will likely never recover and its price will continue to decline.
At that time, I even looked at Bitcoin’s dominance charts and saw that despite its free fall in price, it still had significant dominance over the cryptocurrency market. From these analyses, I concluded that Bitcoin is the only digital currency that has been able to grow, and without having a powerful competitor, it can never have a special achievement.
My investment acumen told me I should invest my savings in a more stable option. As gold continued to rise after the 2008 financial crisis, I ended up buying $7,500 worth of gold bullion to invest in the most stable asset possible.
Not accepting Bitcoin
Again, we go forward three years and reach 2018; When everyone was caught up in the madness of digital currencies. In addition to Bitcoin, other digital assets had also emerged, and initial coin offering (ICO) fever had intensified in the market. In the first three months of 2018 alone, around $6.88 billion was raised through ICO events.
Read more: Why is Bitcoin valuable?
Everyone, even parents, were talking about Bitcoin and digital currencies. If you went to the barber shop for a haircut, you had to talk to the barber about Bitcoin, and if you logged into your Facebook account, you couldn’t help but come across a page or group related to digital currencies.
Meanwhile, even my parents called me and asked if I had any bitcoins. Then they suggested that I buy some bitcoins; Because they have heard that the price may increase.
I cashed out my bitcoins!
At that time, I was also doing freelance content marketing work and if my counterpart was a development team holding a coin IPO event, they would prefer to pay for the work in bitcoins and digital currencies. I even received stablecoins like Tether. At that time, stablecoins had just entered the field and few people did their transactions with them.
Read more: The best Bitcoin wallets in 2023
At a time when the price of each bitcoin was fluctuating between $4,000 and $13,000, I received a large portion of my income in bitcoins. Thus, for the first time, I got a bitcoin; But since I was influenced by the hype of the whole crypto space and the daily volatility of Bitcoin was too high, I decided not to keep my money in Bitcoin. Therefore, as soon as someone would deposit me bitcoins, I would quickly convert them to fiat money to keep my capital safe and secure.
Final Chapter: Bitcoin Acceptance
The middle of 2018 was considered a turning point for me in terms of work. I quit working full-time for others and focused on starting my own company. Luck was on my side and I earned a large amount from the sale of one of my projects; The event that provided the initial capital to start my new investment. As my business grew, my zeros allowed me to sleep easy at night!
Read more: Pitfalls and Risks of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies for Widespread Adoption
Life was good. I had land and real estate and was making more money than I could spend. I had every job opportunity that I could handle, and the situation was completely according to Murad; But one day I thought to myself, why should I cash out my bitcoins at all?
I had a lot of fiat currency in the bank and invested in other things in various financial markets. Having an extra $10,000 wouldn’t make much of a difference to my level of well-being. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that not having bitcoins might make me broke again. Fiat currencies are becoming less valuable and I don’t trust the government’s economic policies either.
Looking back, I realized that many of my trusted people were in favor of Bitcoin. I agree with the views of many Bitcoin fans more than people who deal with fiat currencies. With this in mind, I started collecting and holding Bitcoins as much as my finances allowed. My simple logic was this: if I receive money in the form of Bitcoin, I will keep it without cashing out.
LessonTheWhat I learned from this story
I’m not mad at myself for not investing in Bitcoin sooner. Despite the recent recession of the digital currency markets and the crypto winter, along with controversial events such as the fall of the FTX exchange, I am still very optimistic about the entire digital currency space; But from my experience with Bitcoin, I have learned some lessons that I would like to share with you.
Read more: Bitcoin investment in 2022; Everything you need to know
Lesson 1: Your capital is never so small that you cannot afford to invest in Bitcoin.
In the first days of getting to know Bitcoin, I wish I had at least a thousand dollars to invest; But my thinking was wrong and I just missed the opportunity. If you get a chance, try to use it.
You should not think that you have to invest all your savings or that you should not feel sorry if your capital is small. It’s not that difficult to commit to buying bitcoins every month, even with a small fraction of your income. Undoubtedly, in 2012, I could have saved $50 to buy 5 bitcoins; But I thought 50 dollars was a very small amount to invest.
Lesson 2: Sacrifice today’s brief comfort for tomorrow’s financial well-being
To write this story, I had to look more closely at my memories. Meanwhile, I realized that in early 2012, I had spent $100 on a one-night hotel reservation on a vacation trip with my fiance. When you are in financial trouble, such an expense for booking a hotel night does not seem very reasonable; But this analysis taught me a great lesson in the past.
I definitely could have invested in bitcoins instead of traveling or I could have simply rented a cheaper hotel and put the rest of the money aside to buy bitcoins. The bad feeling of reviewing past memories is useless; But remember that sometimes if you sacrifice short-term comfort today, you may reach financial prosperity in a few years.
Third lesson: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
In 2015, I completely neglected the important issue of balancing my investment portfolio. At the time, I had a lot of money to invest and little desire to buy Bitcoin; But I don’t know how I decided to invest all my money in only one commodity (gold). If I had invested even 20% of my capital in the Bitcoin market at that time, my current profit would have been much higher.
Fourth lesson: Do not look for previous prices
One of the reasons I invested in gold instead of Bitcoin was because I felt like I was buying gold “cheap”. I also checked this issue about Bitcoin; But I came to the conclusion that if I were to invest in Bitcoin, I would buy it “expensive”; Because compared to three years before, it had increased by 25 times!
Now that I look back, I come to the conclusion that the current price is the current price and the criterion for choosing an investment option should not be the comparison of the current price with the past prices. Don’t miss out on an investment today just because it looks more expensive than it did three years ago.
Read more: What is the reason for the increase in the price of Bitcoin?
Lesson 5: Become part of the ecosystem
Accepting and holding Bitcoin is much easier (from a mental point of view) than paying fiat money and buying Bitcoin. If you offer a service or product, allow your customers to pay in Bitcoin; Just don’t make my mistake and turn your Bitcoin into cash as soon as you get it!
Keep at least a fraction of your bitcoin balance intact and forget about it for now. This can increase the adoption rate of Bitcoin and in the long run, it will benefit you and the entire community of the world’s top digital currency.